South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 18th March)

Best Days: No great days in the short term due to the small swells and tricky winds. Monday onwards should start to see some small waves across SE Qld, with mid-late week having the most potential.

Recap: Strong but steadily easing E/SE swell with light offshore winds and NE sea breezes on Tuesday. A further easing trend today with early light offshore winds and a range of lunchtime thru' afternoon winds from the northern quadrant (N/NE on the sunny Coast, but NW on the Goldy and N’ly down the Northern NSW coast).

This week (Mar 19 - 20)

We’re finally drawing to a close some six days of thoroughly decent easterly swell. Hopefully you’ve made the most of this as we’ve got a stint of small, average waves coming up across the Northern NSW and SE Qld regions.

There’ve been no real swell generating systems in our swell window for the last few days so small residual energy is expected for the rest of this week. And with fresh N/NW winds for the most part (except for a shallow S’ly change across the lower Mid North Coast on Thursday afternoon, and again late Friday), you’ll have to tuck into a sheltered northern corner.

Friday’s winds will be lighter than Thursday but either way the surf really won’t be worth working around. 

This weekend (Mar 21 - 22)

Small waves are expected to persist through the entire weekend, with variable conditions across the region.

A ridge will build in behind Friday’s southerly change through Saturday, but it looks like it won’t penetrate much further north than about Coffs Harbour or Yamba. As such variable winds are likely in Far Northern NSW and SE Qld on Saturday, with fresh SE winds to the south. 

In any case surf size will be only small in the north, best suited to the open beaches. The Mid North Coast - and possibly exposed parts of the North Coast - should see a small short range SE swell off the southern ridge but wave heights probably won’t top much more than 2-3ft at open beaches (mainly south facing) where it’ll also be rather bumpy.

Elsewhere, the trades are expected to muscle up south of New Caledonia on Saturday but I don’t think we’ll see an appreciable increase in new swell until Monday. However it’s possible that late Sunday could see a few small waves out of the east (in addition to the small leftover energy already present). At this stage I think it’s unlikely to generate much more than a couple of feet at best for locations between the Sunshine Coast and Ballina.

Next week (Mar 23 onwards)

A small building trade swell should provide peaky 2-3ft surf across the SE Qld coast around Monday and Tuesday, thanks to a broadening trade flow from the South Pacific through the southern Coral Sea over the weekend. No great size is expected from this source and wave heights will be smaller south of Yamba, but in the absence of anything else significant it’s the main focal point we have for now.

A small SE swell originally pegged for Monday (in previous forecasts) has been downgraded a tad, and pushed back to Tuesday. This swell will originate from a small cut-off low off the SW tip of New Zealand’s South Island over the weekend. Don't expect much more than an inconsistent 2ft at exposed beaches in Northern NSW.

Model guidance also shows a small troughy feature developing off the Far North Coast on Tuesday - right now it’s too small to be considered a useful swell source but future model runs may develop this into a more prominent system. Let’s wait and see what happens.

Otherwise, the primary area of interest in the long term is the Tropical South Pacific, which is expected to spawn a tropical low just east of Fiji from Friday through the weekend, potentially developing it into a Tropical Cyclone. 

This system looks like it’ll be part of a broadening but ultimately stationary fetch in our far NE swell window, with the resulting E’ly swell likely to start influencing our coast mid-late next week (i.e. from about Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday onwards). However, the main energy from this swell probably won’t arrive until the end of the week - holding through into the weekend.

Current estimates ave the initial mid-week trade swell worth about 2-3ft at most open beaches, with the long range E’ly groundswell possibly pushing another foot above this - but we’ll have to wait and see how it develops.  

As it is, this is already a small upgrade since Monday so I’ll revise these notes on Friday - hopefully with a further increase on the cards!